The creation of Hamastan?
In the wake of an all out civil war in the Gaza Strip, Hamas forces have beat the forces of Fatah (at times brutally) and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) out of Gaza. Immediately this was seen as a failure of the Bush administrations vision for the ME and an end to the prospect of peace between Israelis and Palestinians and a Palestinian two-state solution. Well, at least for the time being.
Without skipping a beat, many are now saying that this may isolate Hamas in Gaza and open up an avenue for progress in the West Bank where Fatah is still viable. Israel has requested that the new landscape in Palestine view the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as two separate entities. I’m sure someone has suggested sending aid to the West Bank Palestinians and not those in Gaza. Of course we heard similar claims after Hamas won the Palestinian election. The claim then was that they wouldn’t be able to govern and they would become unpopular and weaken culminating in another round of elections where Fatah would resume control. That never happened and Hamas is not weakened and not out of power (although the government they were part of no longer stands according the Abbas) and they currently have full control of a significant territory.
Iraq “Surge”
The US “surge” into Baghdad and western Iraq is complete, 28,500 additional troops are now in Iraq. An early Pentagon assessment concluded:
Three months into the new U.S. military strategy that has sent tens of thousands of additional troops into Iraq, overall levels of violence in the country have not decreased, as attacks have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar, where American forces are concentrated, only to rise in most other provinces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday.
…
Iraq’s government, for its part, has proven “uneven” in delivering on its commitments under the strategy, the report said, stating that public pledges by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have in many cases produced no concrete results.Iraqi leaders have made “little progress” on the overarching political goals that the stepped-up security operations are intended to help advance, the report said, calling reconciliation between Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni factions “a serious unfulfilled objective.” Indeed, “some analysts see a growing fragmentation of Iraq,” it said, noting that 36 percent of Iraqis believe “the Iraqi people would be better off if the country were divided into three or more separate countries.”
Unfortunately the Bush administration will not be able to claim the the “surge” is still surging and that the full “surge” is not present. That didn’t stop Press Secretary Tony Snow from using this excuse one last time in yesterdays press conference:
So what the President does is he looks at the 90-10, and you look at it in terms of what’s going on not merely throughout the nation, but keep in mind that the Baghdad security plan understands that the first thing you’ve got to do is secure the capital. There have been some encouraging signs, but, again, we will reiterate, the surge is not complete, forces are just now, this next couple of weeks flowing in so that you’ve have the full complement of forces, and it’s going to be another month or two before they’re completely up and running at full speed.
Next, I’m sure will be the line, they just got there and they are just now getting started. I expect this line to last till September. Hopefully Sept. will bring a marked improvement but I’m not optomistic and don’t believe the case will be made that the strategy is effective enough. Now is not the time for baby steps in Iraq. The time for that was in 2003-04.
Menwhile, 4th generation warfare guru William Lind lambastes the tactics used in this urban guerrilla war as indicative of the failure of US foreign policy (check out a coming post on the Gaza situation for more claims of US FP failure). Particularity the use of US air power on Iraqi ground targets such as a railroad station. Lind writes:
It turns out the bombed railroad station was no fluke. According to other reports, U.S. aircraft have dropped more than 200 bombs or missiles on Iraqi ground targets this year in support of U.S. ground forces at a rate double that of last year.
Nothing could testify more powerfully to the failure of U.S. efforts on the ground in Iraq than a ramp-up in airstrikes. Calling in air is the last, desperate, and usually futile action of an army that is losing. If anyone still wonders whether the “surge” is working, the increase in air strikes offers a definitive answer: It isn’t.
Worse, the growing number of air strikes shows that, despite what the Marines have accomplished in Anbar province and Gen. David Petraeus’s best efforts, our high command remains as incapable as ever of grasping Fourth Generation war.
To put it bluntly, there is no surer or faster way to lose in 4GW than by calling in airstrikes. It is a disaster on every level. Physically, it inevitably kills far more civilians than enemies, enraging the population against us and driving them into the arms of our opponents. Mentally, it tells the insurgents we are cowards who only dare fight them from 20,000 feet in the air. Morally, it turns us into Goliath, a monster every real man has to fight. So negative are the results of air strikes in this kind of war that there is only one possible good number of them: zero, unless we are employing the “Hama model” of seeking total destruction, which we are not.
The Somali War
As mentioned before, the horn of Africa has seen renewed fighting between the Union of Islamic Court (UIC) and the weak Transitional National Government (TNG). Before the TNG was only aided by neighboring Ethiopia. More recently, Ethiopia has increased it’s operations to include air attacks on UIC targets such as UIC controlled towns and villages and the main airports in Somalia.
The Fighting Begins in Somalia
A deadline imposed by Islamic forces under the command of the Union of Islamic Court (UIC) demanding the eviction of Ethiopian forces from Somali passed Tuesday. The “heavy fighting” was reported in and around the Transitional National Government (TNG) bases in Baidoa.
(BBC)
The Palestinian Conflict
Fatah and Hamas reach agreement
A top Palestinian security official said Tuesday that Hamas and Fatah officials had agreed to pull their armed men off the streets of Gaza City after more than a week of rampant street violence.
The two sides also agreed to form a joint operations room with the Fatah-led security forces to respond quickly to any outbreaks of violence, the official said.
The agreement was reached after intense mediation by Egypt, the official said. A tenuous truce signed Sunday broke down within 24 hours, as violence continued on both sides.
Under the current deal, only Palestinian police would be allowed to patrol the streets with weapons, the official said. The withdrawal will begin within hours, he added.
A similar deal was announced earlier this week and lasted a matter of hours. I’ll update when this one collapses.
In related news, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has again called for “…an independent Palestinian state is established in territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.”
…Haniyeh said the truce could last as long as 20 years, after an independent Palestinian state is established in territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.
During his speech, the Palestinian prime minister also called on the warring Palestinian factions to desist infighting and unite together against Israel.
Who says Hamas refuses to acknowledge Israel… (/snark)
[2006-12-20 9:24 PM] As expected, within hours of the new truce continuing violence has threatened the relative calm in Gaza.
The Iraqi Insurgency
Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released a report (.pdf) last week on the current sectarian or civil war occurring in the middle portion of Iraq. The results of his studies paint an expected picture of the state as one that is anything but encouraging. Most coverage of his report was concentrated on his analysis of the insurgency, concluding that “[s]ectarian fighting, led by the growth of some 23 militias around Baghdad, formed the foundation of the civil war.” Baghdad was “…the center of the sectarian conflict, but violence spread to surrounding towns — particularly Baquba, Balad, and Amara — as the civil war threatened to engulf the entire country.” The first paragraph sets the mood of this report
The insurgency in Iraq has become a “war after the war” that threatens to divide the country and create a full-scale civil conflict. It has triggered sectarian and ethnic violence that dominates the struggle to reshape Iraq as a modern state, has emerged as a growing threat to the Gulf region, and has become linked to the broader struggle between Sunni and Shi’ite Islamist extremism, and moderation and reform, throughout the Islamic world. (p. 2)
Some of the emerging trends noted by Cordesman adding to the troubles in Iraq are listed below (p. 2-3)
Sectarian fighting, led by the growth of some 23 militias around Baghdad, formed the foundation of the civil war. Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army developed rogue components that acted outside of his command. Sunnis formed loosely organized neighborhood death squads in the urban areas, some with ties to al-Qai’da or ex-Ba’athist groups. Two large scale attacks formed the foundation of reprisal killings in the fall: On 14 November Shi’ite militias were accused of abduction 150 people from the Ministry of Higher Education and on 23 November Sunni militants were accused of killing over 200 in bombings in Sadr City. Baghdad and other major cities – such as Basra and Baquba – were almost completely divided into sectarian strongholds as both Sunnis and Shi’a fled neighborhoods in which they were a minority. Soft ethnic cleansing forced upwards of 400,000 Iraqis to relocate within Iraq since the February Samarra mosque bombing. The Sunni Arab insurgency remained focused in the western Anbar Province and benefited from the relocation of US troops to quell sectarian violence in Baghdad. Attack patterns continued to focus on civilians with the average deaths per day rising to almost 100 in October. According to Iraq Coalition Casualty count, 3,539 Iraqi civilians died in September, 1,315 died in October, and 1,740 died in November. The US also saw an increase in attacks in the capital and IED attacks reached an all time high. 104 US troops died in October, the highest since January 2005. One-third of the deaths were in the capital, but the majority of US troops were killed in Anbar Province. An additional 68 US troops died in November. The Shi’ite community was internally divided, increasingly along militia-support lines. The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) was the most powerful political bloc, but al-Sadr’s militia and its rogue components found widespread support from the Shi’ite population. An incident in Amara in October underscored the tensions between SCIRI and al-Sadr. US military attention focused on curbing the heightened concentration of violence in Baghdad, while violence outside of the capital continued to intensify, particularly in key areas such as Baquba, Basra, Mosul, and Falluja. Turkey pledged their support for the minority Turkoman population in Iraq and urged Iraq to take action against PKK rebel activity in the Kurdish north. Kurds continued to conflict with Arabs in key cities such as Kirkuk and Mosul. Regional players, particularly Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, and Turkey were increasingly concerned about the spread of civil war across the region.
Politically, Cordesman finds that the reconciliation process is failing, and the fragile government is often in deadlock and on the verge of collapse. The Iraqi government was also unable to quell the violence and create order; even with the aid of the MNF, additional US troops, and the 300,000 US trained Iraqi Security Forces.
Economically, Iraq is — again — deteriorating rapidly. The average Iraqi potentially faced a “severe fuel crisis, joblessness, high inflation rates, and a burgeoning black market” in recent months. Oil production remains low and the average hours of electricity per day in Baghdad was 6.8 hours (see fig below). Additionally, education and healthcare also began to feel the effects of the conflict. An estimated 400,000 people have fled Iraq since the war began.
[2006-12-20 1:47 PM] UPIs coverage.
A Palestinian Civil War?
The Passport points out that things continue to simmer between the two top factions in the Palestinian territories. An Israeli intel report indicates that Iran may be training Hamas fighters.
Israeli military officials said Monday that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Hamas militants recently left the Gaza Strip to receive advanced military training in Iran.
The training is similar to that received by thousands of Hezbollah guerrillas from Lebanon over the past few years, and Israel fears it will greatly improve Hamas’ military capability in any future battle with Israel Defense Forces troops in Gaza, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
…
The mass training of Hamas fighters in Iran is a new development reflecting the growing alliance between Shiite Iran and the Sunni Hamas movement, Israel warned.
This development comes as the Palestinian president has called for new elections; a move Hamas has rejected. This, in addition to other events, brings the territories closer to a civil war (if one isn’t already happening).
[2006-12-18 2:42 PM] From The Guardian (h/t John Robb) in an article entitled ‘This looks like civil war’ – Palestinians battle on the streets:
Mr Haniyeh’s trip abroad, during which he secured promises of around $350m in funding from Iran, Qatar and Sudan, was seen by many Palestinians as an endorsement of his rule. “That was a message for people here that he received legitimacy in the Arab world,” said Mr Khatib.
Despite the donations, Hamas remains far short of the approximately $600m Israel has kept from the Palestinian Authority in tax revenues. But the economic crisis does not seem to have dampened Hamas’s support. Mr Khatib said his polling research suggested Hamas would keep its majority if elections were called now.
That is, if they participate…
[2006-12-18 3:04 PM] Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan calls the call for new elections “…a ‘very negative’ move so soon after the last Palestinian elections.”
[2006-12-19 2:15 PM] Mark I Levenstein provides deeper analysis of the existing poll data between the two factions; Hamas and Fatah. Along with a brief look at the constitutionality of this possible move by Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah
RSS 2.0
